The miraculous Maratuech

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Last december the restoration of a remarkable car was finished in the Bordeaux region of France. The project had been made possible by the Fondation du Patrimoine, a French foundation which tries to protect and restore all kinds of heritage: churches, mills, bridges etc. In case of the restoration of vehicles, the Fondation gets financial support from Motul, the well-known maker of motor oil. Motul had already sponsored the restoration of e.g. a 1923 Renault fire engine, a Porsche 917 and a 1935 Lanz tractor.
This strange looking vehicle was built by Fernand Maratuech in 1922. M. Maratuech was an amateur inventor who also constructed a steam-driven sewing machine, a motorcycle running on gas and many more. He realized that his budget would not allow him to build one of his biggest dreams: his own plane. Therefore, he looked for a compromise: a plane without wings, combining the best features of cars and planes in one vehicle.The car is like a fuselage on three wheels, the two front ones being quite far apart to make it stabler. Fernand used a BSA engine of only about 0,3 litre. It is not known why he didn't try propulsion by a propellor, like on the vehicles built by Leyat (see Rétromobile 2013). Maybe he foresaw problems with the Leyat patents. During the 1920s Maratuech drove more than 5000 kilometers in his non-flying plane, reaching maximum speeds of 80 km per hour.Somewhere in the 1930s the car was stored and it seems that it was not used for the next fifty years. In 1990 Fernand's widow offered the car to the Automobile Club du Sud-Ouest in whose Bordeaux office the Maratuech can now be admired.  More Maratuech at Fondation du Patrimoine.

photo by  © Patrick Loubet 

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